This invention relates to computer-generated diagrams.
The difficulty in explaining a procedure with normal text is that the reader is forced to understand the micro level of individual steps as well as the macro level of the entire process. Very little aid is given by the visual representation of the text itself. A reader who is interested in just one logical thread must read the whole text and ignore the parts that do not relate directly to the selected logical sequence. This is the main reason why any process description, in instructions, manuals, and so on, is much more understandable when it is done in the form of a diagram.
Logic diagrams of natural text are widely useful, yet time-consuming to create by hand. Therefore, a great need exists for a computer-based system for logic diagram generation.
In order to computer-generate logic diagrams corresponding to a text, the logical structure must be evident to the device performing the task. The starting point of the present invention was a series of commercial products named CLEAR+.sup..TM. which were developed by the present inventors to generate logic diagrams for computer code written in various high-level computer languages, which formally define all logical structures. Natural languages, however, do not formally define all logical structures, especially when the structures are nested.
The present invention provides a computer-based workstation where a user can quickly indicate the logical structure of a text in computer memory written in any natural language using a prescribed set of symbols, instruct the computer to generate a logic diagram corresponding to the text, and finally to interactively view and edit the diagram to suit the application at hand.